by Michael Beck
I left her peeling her potatoes. Ryan's room had a dusty, stuffy smell. There was something familiar about it which I couldn't place until I realized it smelt like my home. My real home. I suppose I wasn't the only one who couldn't forget. The single bed was unmade and there was a pile of clothes heaped in the corner. On the bedside table were several beer bottles. I searched the room but didn't find anything like a journal.
One wall had shelves that held trophies, pictures, books and video games. All were covered in a layer of dust. The pictures grabbed my attention. I recognized Franklin, Dyson--aka Decker--and Maxwell straight away. They went back a long way. Football games, birthday parties, Christmases. There was even a picture of them all on BMX bikes, when they couldn't have been more than nine years old.
Underneath the bottom shelf, hidden under a pile of books, I found an old metal cookie can. Inside were more photos. But not just of the three boys. Now there were five of them, an extra boy and a girl. The girl must be Ashley Hunter. I had no idea who the fourth boy was, although there was something familiar about his face. He was tall and slim with short, brown hair. What stood out were not his smiling good looks, which were striking, but the way he dominated each photo.
In nearly every photo he was the central figure. He was the one the others were looking at. He was the one talking. Everyone else gathered around him like planets orbiting the sun. The five of them seemed to do everything together. Swimming, horse riding, hiking, fishing and, I noticed with interest, skiing. I wonder if they had intended skiing that Thanksgiving weekend?
I picked up the last photo. The four boys and Ashley. It looked like summer. They were surrounded by densely forested mountains and, in the background, I could see the edge of a cabin. The Thanksgiving cabin? Ashley was on the end, next to Dyson. The unidentified boy, as usual, was in the center. They all had their arms around each other's shoulders, except for Dyson who had his arm around Ashley's waist. Ashley was very pretty. She was slim with long dark hair and a cheeky smile. In fact, all of them were smiling at the camera except for Dyson. The photo had caught him, with his head to the side, looking at Ashley.
Mrs. Franklin had finished peeling potatoes and was rocking back and forth in her chair when I stepped back on to the porch. Her son looked up for a moment, then swung angrily at the next piece of wood.
"Your son doesn't seem too glad to see me."
"Don't mind Clint. He was very close to Ryan and now he's just angry at life. Did you find anything?"
"This picture. Is the girl Ashley Hunter?"
"Yes. She was a pretty young thing, wasn't she? And so full of life. It was always a mystery to me how she ever came from the loins of that sourpuss, Henry Hunter. Have you met him yet?"
"No."
"You're in for a treat then."
"Can you tell me who the boy in the middle is?"
"That's Kyle King. Look at them. They were so happy." She sighed. "Life certainly has a way of cutting us down to size, doesn't it?"
"They were pretty close?"
"Thick as thieves. Especially the boys, they always were together. Not so much Ashley, as her dad often kept her home. The boys were always playing ball, fishing, riding their motor bikes. They really had a splendid childhood...up until that weekend."
"I didn't see King in their Year Book?"
"No. Kyle went to Colorado International School in Denver."
"How come he didn't go with them that Thanksgiving?"
"He was going to but came down ill. Kyle always led a charmed life."
I walked down the stairs.
"Thanks for your time, Mrs. Franklin, I'm sorry to have bothered you. Do you mind if I take this photo and copy it?"
"Not at all. That's fine." She nodded quietly and kept rocking.
I opened the car door but stopped when she spoke. I wasn't sure if she was talking to herself or to me.
"I always told him to take that road carefully and that it was really slippery when it was wet. But he never listened to me or his father. My husband died four months after Ryan. They say it was a heart attack, but Ryan's death knocked all the stuffing out of him. It broke him. The same day Ryan died I walked down to lay flowers on the tree where it happened. It's just down the road a piece there, you know? I could still see the tire tracks. They ran straight from the road, thirty yards dead into that tree. Funny thing. There wasn't a skid or brake mark anywhere on that wet grass. I reckon he had his foot on the gas the whole way."
There didn't seem to be anything to say to that, so I got in my car and drove away.
The heavy, black clouds finally did what they had threatened to do and snow began to fall heavily. Visibility deteriorated and my speed slowed, until I was only doing twenty miles an hour as I negotiated the narrow road above the lake. The temperature plummeted and, even with the heater on high, I was still cold.
So, Franklin was dead. I couldn't reach Maxwell. And Decker wasn't talking. The investigation was going splendidly. Why those kids ever wanted to spend a weekend in a cabin in the middle of a freak storm was beyond me. I like the heat of the summer sun on my back and this kind of weather only depresses me. I decided to go back to the Denver Public Library to see what else I could find about the events of that Thanksgiving weekend. At worst, I could still have a read of a good western.
I had slowed to take a sharp curve when I was blinded by headlights coming straight at me. I twisted the wheel when my door was struck a massive blow. I was flung violently to the side and my seat belt cut deeply into my neck. My car veered towards the cliff.
I turned the wheel but the other car pushed me inexorably towards the edge. I stomped the brakes but it was too late. I hit the edge and rolled over. My head smashed into the side window. Everything slowed down as my world spun.
Twice my car rolled. My vision faded, my thoughts swirled chaotically. And then I was airborne, falling toward an icy expanse. The car hit the ice and went straight through. Stopped as the back wheels caught on the ice. The front dipped down. All I could see was blackness.
Water began to pour in through the sides of the door. I undid my seatbelt and pulled the handle. The door wouldn't budge. Again and again I hammered my shoulder against the door, but the wild tumble down the cliff had jammed it.
Suddenly, the back wheels slipped free and the car dived towards the bottom of the lake. Bone-chilling water flooded up to my waist. I climbed into the back seat, searching for the rear door handle. The water continued to rise. The blackness was absolute.
When I couldn't find the handle, I pushed my face up against the roof, sucking in air from a tiny air pocket. I took one last, huge breath before the water reached the roof then desperately ran my hand along the door. For a moment my fingers, numb with cold, could only grasp clumsily. Then, I had it. Pushing hard, I slowly opened the door and pulled myself through. Once free, I kicked towards the surface.
The icy water was unbelievably, torturously painful. I kicked off my shoes and swam hard, knowing that the surface could only be a second away. In the next instant, something struck a terrible blow to my head. Stunned, I peered around. Gray, featureless ice, in every direction.
The undersurface of the ice was rough and I used it to pull myself along. My lungs began to burn. The temptation to inhale was becoming irresistible.
Suddenly, my face emerged into an air pocket. I desperately sucked in huge breaths.
I didn't have long. The cold was a monster, sucking the life out of me. I struck the ice with my fist repeatedly but it was like hitting cement.
To stay there was to die. I took one last breath and left the air pocket. Again I pulled myself along, searching for a break.
Something brushed across my face. Something strong but thin. Fishing line? With fingers that couldn't feel, I gently pulled myself along the line. If I broke it I was dead. A fishing line might have a thirty-pound breaking strain. I weighed two hundred and fifteen pounds.
My vision began to darken. My body felt like it was made of some dead,
inanimate substance. My hands were so frozen I couldn't feel the ice underneath them. Dimly, I realized this was because the ice was gone. With my last strength I pulled hard. The line snapped as my head broke the surface. Three fishing rods dangled above my head as I held on to the sides of the tiny fishing hole.
I grasped the sides and tried to lift myself out and failed. I can do thirty chin ups normally but right then I couldn't even lift my body weight once. I flung myself forward and dug my fingers into the roughened ice surface. An inch at a time, I pulled myself out and lay on the ice, coughing up water and shaking uncontrollably.
I felt myself pass in and out of consciousness. The desire to let my eyes close was overwhelming. But I knew if I did I would never open them again.
"C'mon, Tanner, get moving!" It was meant to be a yell but what came out was an inarticulate growl.
Finally, gathering my feet under me, I stood up, swaying from side to side like a drunk on Valium.
The snow was deep and I couldn't see the top of the cliff. But if anyone was up there, they couldn't see me either. I staggered across to the cliff and began to walk along the base of it. It was torturous going. The snow was up to my thighs and twice I tripped over branches or rocks hidden underneath. The second time, I lay in the soft snow. For a moment I thought I was in my bed and I sighed and closed my eyes. An image of Jade flashed before me.
Jade. Can't sleep.
I struggled up and noticed for the first time that I was barefoot. Didn't matter. My feet weren't even cold. I couldn't feel them. The cliff actually helped, sheltering me from any wind. Wind chill, rather than air temperature, is what plummets the body into hypothermia and death.
I began climbing the cliff. The combination of steep incline and deep snow made it almost impossible. For every step forward, I slid two backwards. In the end, I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled to the top. Once there I lay exhausted in the snow, peering along the road.
I couldn't wait long. I needed to move or the cold would kill me. After a couple of minutes, I struggled to my feet and began to walk back towards the Maxwell ranch. How far had I driven before I crashed? Two miles? Possibly three?
Back in New York, I could run that in eleven minutes. Of course, I normally didn't run in sodden jeans, jacket, without shoes. I stumbled along the side of the road, ready to jump down the cliff if the car returned. I came to where my car tracks disappeared over the edge. There was a big black hole in the ice where I went through. No sign of my car.
I began the walk to the Hunter's ranch. My vision kept blurring and I rubbed my eyes. My hand came away wet. I held it up before me and squinted. It was red. Red snow? Several times, I awoke, befuddled, lying on the road with no idea how I got there. Each time I struggled up and continued my punch-drunk walk through the snow. Ten minutes or two hours later I heard something. A pick-up truck had pulled up next to me. Clint Maxwell, elbow sticking out his window, regarded me.
"Around here we tend to wear shoes when we go walking in the snow."
"I'll remember that next time." I didn't recognize my voice.
"There's going to be a next time? You're not exactly one for learning quickly, are you?"
"Unfortunately, that's a problem I've never had."
CHAPTER 36
I stood in a dead man's clothes next to Sheriff Shaw looking down at the hole my car had disappeared into fifteen hours ago.
"Looks like you nearly became a chapter in your own book, Mr. Peanut."
"Pee-new, Sheriff. Have you located the car that hit me?"
"No. But I will. There aren't that many body shops in Leadville, plus we're a small town. Next to impossible for someone to keep damage to their car a secret." He spat tobacco and left an ugly brown stain on the snow. "Most peculiar. Folks around here are normally really friendly. Never heard of someone having an accident and driving away."
"Chief, I keep telling you it was no accident."
I felt Shaw look skeptically at me.
"He came straight at me and pushed me over the edge. Look at the tire marks. He veered over to my side of the road."
"The snow's wiped any tracks out," said Shaw. "It was snowing heavily and visibility was poor. The driver probably just wandered over to the wrong side of the road. Accidents like this happen all the time up here."
"I tell you he could have stopped but he didn't. If it was like you said, why didn't he hang around to help?"
Shaw shrugged. "Guy probably panicked. Saw you go to the bottom and thought you were dead."
"Yeah, well I would have been except for that fishing line."
"You were lucky."
"How's that?"
"Ice-fishermen don't normally leave their rods behind. Clint Hunter said he only left them there because he was coming back tonight. Any other day and they wouldn't have been there."
It was fifteen hours since I went into the water, and I almost felt normal again. The Franklins had lent me some of Ryan's clothes, wrapped me in blankets and fed me, literally. It took an hour of agonizing pins and needles before I could feel my hands and toes. Then I slept like a dead man for twelve hours. Well, not quite. I got to wake up.
It had stopped snowing. From where we stood at the top of the cliff, I could now see across to the far side of the lake. It was with some dismay, that I saw the distance between where my car went in and Clint's fishing hole. I had thought I had probably only travelled twenty or thirty yards under the ice. I could see now it was closer to fifty. What made it worse was that there was only the one fishing hole in the whole, white frozen expanse of the lake. It was only pure freakish luck that had saved me.
"Not bad for a journalist, Mr. Peanut."
"Sorry, what?"
Shaw gestured at the two holes. "College courses must have really improved. I don't know any men, apart from military, that could have done that."
"You underestimate the value of a good, American college education, Sheriff."
"Mr. Peanut, excuse me for getting personal, and I have only known you for a day, but I think you are full of it."
"Don't be sorry, Sheriff. That tends to be the common consensus."
CHAPTER 37
At the Leadville Library the same librarian, Susan, set me up at a computer and left me to it. I Googled Matt Maxwell. Immediately a hit from the local Leadville Herald, dated twelve months ago, caught my eye.
Leadville Man Charged With Possession of Child Pornography.
Matt Maxwell of Leadville, Colorado, was charged today on ten counts of possession of child pornography. Police will allege that Maxwell was in possession of video footage of minors engaged in graphic sex scenes. In addition, police allege that Maxwell's laptop contained over one hundred photos of children in a variety of sexual acts.
Maxwell entered a plea of not guilty and was released on bail of fifty thousand dollars. Maxwell made news three months ago when he was dismissed from the prestigious Stockbroker Firm, Gilmont Associates, after accusations of alleged sexual impropriety. Maxwell's wife, Georgia, is currently seeking custody of their two children. Maxwell declined to comment.
I rocked back in my chair. No wonder the Maxwells hadn't wanted to talk to me. Reporters must have been all over them trying to get a story. So much for families sticking together. What had the dad said? "I have no son named Matt." In a small town like Leadville, charges of a sexual nature against minors would have gone down like a lead balloon. The family's reputation would have been destroyed, public scrutiny unbelievably intense. No surprise the Maxwells were trying to distance themselves from Matt.
I remembered Sheriff Shaw's amusement when he said I could try the boy's families. One family was still grieving their son's death and the other family attacked me, angry at the media attention their accused son had drawn. Thanks, Sheriff.
I read the article again. Jesus, life wasn't going too smoothly for old Matt. In under a year he'd lost his job, his wife and family, and might be going to prison.
Thinking about it, life hadn't been swee
t for any of the three boys after that weekend. Franklin had become a drunk and committed suicide. Maxwell's whole life was in tatters, and he would be lucky not to spend some time in jail. And Decker's career was lurching from catastrophe to catastrophe, hanging by only the proverbial thread.
The Thanksgiving Curse?
What happened at that cabin on that weekend to have had such a profound effect on the three boys? Was everything just the result of emotional turmoil at losing a good friend? Or was it something darker? Something more sinister?
I Googled Ashley Hunter and clicked on Town Mourns Local Girl.
There was a picture of Ashley taken, it appeared, from her year book, and an article about her funeral and the circumstances surrounding her death. Again, there was no hint that her death was anything but a tragic accident.
"Oh, the girl with no panties," said a woman, behind me.
CHAPTER 38
The librarian was standing behind me, looking at the screen.
"What?" I said.
She blushed. "Oh, nothing. Sorry, I shouldn't have peeked." She began to move away.
"No, stay. What did you mean? The girl with no panties?"
"Oh, nothing. It's just that I knew Ashley well because we went to the same school. It was a big local story. Mainly because of the panties."
"Panties?" I said, thinking I'd misheard again.
"Yes. She wasn't wearing any panties. From memory she was wearing just a skirt and sweater."
"There's no mention of that in any of the articles."
"There wouldn't be. She was a local girl. They've got to be tactful about what they print. But you should have heard the names going through the high school."
"Names?"
She blushed again. "Yes. They're really too awful to say. You know what kids are like."
"Try me. I promise I won't be embarrassed."
She tilted her head to look at me and surprised me with her boldness when she said, "I don't think anything much would embarrass you."